Leaving Santa Barbara on Thursday, on a beautiful sunny morning, I headed down the coast on 101 through Ventura again.
I got off the freeway in Oxnard with the intention of making my way down Highway 1 along the coast towards Malibu.
All was going well until about the third or fourth stoplight in Oxnard when I noticed the car was behaving strangely at idle, as if it were having electrical problems.
I revved the engine and it was sputtering noticeably. Something was wrong.
So I looked for a convenient place to pull over and park, next to a gas station on a side street.
I turned off the engine, then immediately tried to start it again. The engine didn't turn over at all.
A bunch of thoughts went through my mind. Since I'd just bought a brand new battery in Santa Barbara, it was obvious something was more seriously wrong.
I walked around the surrounding blocks looking for a prospective mechanic. It was about noon. I might be able to squeeze something in today.
Thankfully it wasn't a Friday, as it was in New Jersey when my radiator failed.
I realized the best thing to do was to break down and call AAA. The representative in Colorado put me through to the Southern California chapter and within a few minutes I was receiving text updates telling me a service vehicle had been dispatched for me.
The responder, Manuel, hooked up probes to the battery in the trunk and found the charging system was shot. I would need a new alternator.
He suggested a mechanic he knew. He called them and they said they could probably get it done today, for a price that was less than I expected. I gave him the green light.
It was with a little bit of wistfulness that I watched him hook his tow truck up my car. For the first time in almost five years of owning this vehicle, and having driven it over seventy thousand miles through forty-five states, I was having it towed.
Up until now, I had always been able to get it to a mechanic under its own power, even when I thought it was done for. The perfect record was shot.
During the short trip Manuel asked me what I was doing in Oxnard. I tried to explain to him my lifestyle, that I travel around working from the road, doing what I please.
He could barely wrap his mind around it.
"What are you, a scientist?" he asked me.
"Well, actually I am a scientist, or I used to be," I said, "but that's not how I earn my living right now."
I went on to explain to him the kind of technical work I do, in a matter-of-fact way. It was as if I'd opened up a whole new world to him. I felt like an evangelist for the new American Dream.
The garage was in a line of similar independent auto shops only about a half mile away. I thanked Manuel. He asked me to give him a good evaluation in the AAA questionnaire that I would receive later. I said I certainly would.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in a nearby Starbucks doing some work, and then waiting in the garage as the mechanic finished up the repair work.
The new alternator turned out to be the easy part, but at their recommendation I also authorized them to replace the belts, as I knew they were old.
But finding the right size belts turned out to be a challenge. The mechanic kept having to send for new belts from a nearby auto parts store. Each time he flirted a bit with the delivery girl who arrived with the new belt.
The sun went down and after dark it started to get cold. I waited in the garage at the crowded messy office desk listening to Christian music in Spanish. The mechanic flamboyantly sang "Noche de Paz" at the top of his voice as he tried to get the last belt in place.
Finally I was getting nervous that I might have to cancel my hotel reservation. I started hovering around him, eager to get back on the road.
I turned out the sticking point was the air conditioning belt. I laughed because my air conditioning has never worked in the whole time I've owned the car. It's not that it's broken---it's just that I never bothered to charge it up.
When I told him as much, he finally gave up and reinstalled the old belt, which was in decent condition. I paid the bill and was back on the road again.
It was too late for Malibu, so I got back on 101 and plowed south in the dark, very happy to be one set of headlights in a long procession of commuter pilgrims that snaked up into the hills towards Los Angeles.
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